So a yourkeyword.net is always preferred over a your-keyword.com?
Do most people feel .net is more acceptable than dashes?

The question is basically whether it’s a good idea to use dashes in domains that you buy.

I personally have some domains with dashes and I’ve seen a few drawbacks. I’m not totally against them, but to be honest, with the drawbacks that they have I can’t justify going with them when there are better options.

There are two big drawbacks that I see with dashed-domains:

1. The resale value is lowered.
2. The click-through rate from search engines to your site is lower. No one would be able to test this without having two sites that rank for the same keyword – fortunately I have seen this situation and can tell you that the dashes seem to affect this. It isn’t going to affect it by a huge amount but dashed domains do tend to look a little more spammy than domains that aren’t dashed and this will make a small amount of people skip over them.

The question asked more specifically if you should choose ‘yourkeyword.net’ over ‘your-keyword.com’ and this is a definite yes. With yourkeyword.net you have an exact keyword match in the domain and this will give you a ranking advantage. I don’t have any evidence personally that ‘your-keyword.com’ gives you the exact match bonus with Google, in fact my experience tells me that it seems not to.

I don’t really know (or care to be honest) what most people prefer. All I know is what my results have told me and that’s what I trust.

Learning how to choose a domain name for your website is quite simple, especially if you’re setting up a simple niche site.

People tend to get really confused when it comes to choosing a domain because of all of the conflicting strategies and advice that is out there. In order to make this as effective as possible, let’s define two totally different types of sites:

1. Niche informational sites – This series is designed to teach you how to create these. Niche informational websites are probably the most effective types of sites for individuals to make. They are generally somewhat small but still provide solid information, albeit about a small topic.
2. Flagship sites – These sites generally have hundreds of pages and are designed to obtain readers and repeat visitors. These are great selling tools for advanced internet marketers but can be a lot to manage.

How To Choose A Domain Name For A Niche Informational Site

Please keep in mind that this lesson is addressing only how to select domains for a niche informational site. Here is my preferred order that I always follow when choosing domains for my niche sites:

1. The .com version of the main keyword of your niche site – placeyourkeywordhere.com. If it’s available, register it and your search is over. An example of this would be trying to register cheapcellphoneplans.com if your keyword was ‘cheap cell phone plans’.
2. The .net version of your keyword – placeyourkeywordhere.net. Obviously you’re going to go with the .com if it’s available and if it’s not, try the .net. An example of this would be trying to register cheapcellphoneplans.net if your keyword was ‘cheap cell phone plans’.
3. The .com version of your keyword with an additional word at the beginning or the end. For example, placeyourkeywordhereguru.com. There are plenty of words you can add to your keyword to make this work including site, shop, info, guide, guru, gurus, best, and online. Find one that works for you and register it.

The bottom line for a niche website is to get your keyword in your domain, and to use a .com or a .net.

We use Proud Domains to register our domains. They have 24/7 phone support, are very reliable, and cost less than GoDaddy and Register.com.

Update: Here’s an auxiliary lesson on this topic: Should I Use Dashes Or No Dashes In My Domains?

Yesterday I registered two new .com domain names at ProudDomains.com for a manufacturing business my father-in-law is hoping to start in the next couple of years. He’s not even sure if the idea will pan out, but I told him we might as well buy a couple of domains and age them just in case.

So, I bought the domains, added them to an existing hosting account I already have set up, and installed Wordpress on both (so I can easily put some “placeholder” content on the sites).

With all of that finished they still weren’t set up to age in a way that would make them more valuable. Can you guess what was missing?

Quick story. Yesterday I also had a conversation with Michael – a nice guy down in New Orleans who’s investigating the coaching program. As I completed the most important step with my new domains I thought about what Michael had told me on the phone:

“I own about fifty .com domains.”

Me: “How many of them are indexed by Google?”

“Three.”

Michael, I hope you’re reading this, because having three out of fifty domains indexed just won’t do.

If you want to make all fifty domains ten to twenty times more valuable, point a few links at them and get them into Google’s index.

You see, it doesn’t really matter when a domain was registered. If you want it to increase in value and ability to rank, it needs to be indexed by Google. The magic number seems to be nine to twelve months before its ranking power really jumps.

When I got on my computer this morning the first thing I did was check to see whether my new domains had been indexed during the night, and sure enough – one of them was already there. The other hasn’t shown up yet, but I know it will within in the next couple of days.

If you already have a portfolio of domains – and I’m sure many of you do – make sure you’re getting them indexed. Not only will they rank much more quickly if you ever get around to using them, but they’ll also gain value based strictly on their age.

I’ve paid $100 to $300 for aged domains, which means my friend Michael’s portfolio could be worth between $5,000 and $15,000 on the open market if he made sure they all got into Google’s index for the next twelve months.

I suppose you could take this advice one step further by purchasing a few domains per month, aging them, and then selling them. Might not be a bad little stream of income…

Hope you’re all having a great day.

- Mark